I formatted my hdd and installed fresh win8 yesterday. So it's pretty much a clean start for me.
I also wanted to try mint so I inserted a live DVD just to see it freeze - by freezing I mean that everything, even a mouse pointer, stops responding completely. KDE doesn't even make it to desktop (gets stuck while showing those loading KDE icons in the middle), Cinnamon makes it to desktop but freezes soon (when I rushed to installation menu it got stuck while choosing partitions).
What might be the underlying cause?
The rig is 18 months old, nothing special: core i5 sandy bridge, single GTX580 (HDMI connection), 8GB ram, ASUS P8Z68-Deluxe motherboard.






